Anglo-Saxon coinage from 828

[Figleaf]

Thank you! That clarifies our different views. Rollo and his successor William Longsword stand at the beginning of the duchy of Normandy, indeed vassals of the French king. Still, it is important to note that the Norman duchy was created out of despair (and perhaps under the influence of Anne of Kyiv) of the French king, who hoped to get control over the frequent invaders and that both the Capetian kings and the dukes considered Normans and Franks to be different tribes. It was a natural for the Norseman to accept, as they had become raiders because of lack of fertile land at home so Normandy must have looked great to them.

At the end of the history stands Anne de Bretagne, double-crossed again and again by French kings until the duchy of Normandy lost its independence. She is still remembered in French children's songs as slightly silly.

At the time of the Norman invasion of England, we are somewhere in-between. Rollo was remembered and honoured, but irrelevant of the present. The Normans supported Henry I in the battle of Val-ès-Dunes, but the king betrayed them to his barons afterwards, in an attempt to have his barons subjugate them for him. It is difficult to count the Normans as Franks at any time, including in 1066.

As for the pope's approval you mention, don't forget he was a marionette of the Hautevilles.

Peter

[Hastein]

That clarifies our different views.

Those were not my views. What I wrote is in line with both medieval and modern historiography, and a far cry from your depiction of the conquest as a conflict pitting "Norman bastards from greater Brittany" against "Norman bastards from lesser Brittany".

It seems you were further addressing a point which I was not trying to make. I didn't mean to conflate the two peoples outright, but rather to dispute your claim of independence ahead of the conquest, which however construed simply does not hold up to historical records. This is especially true in light of William's army whose composition can only be explained within the context I provided above. That is, one that underscores joint military operations and the permeability of the Norman, Breton and Frankish aristocracy from the very beginning, this regardless of concomitant conflicts with the crown, which was but one layer of a dense and highly intertwined nobility.

As for the rest of your post, I'm afraid it is nonsense. Anne of Kiev had nothing to do with the creation of a duchy that already existed before she was born; Charles the Simple was known to have had the upper hand after routing the vikings at the siege of Chartres (see McKitterick "The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians", his crucial role and that of the Robertians in Norman integration has been revisited in recent scholarship); by the end of the 10th century, the Normans were "not only christians but in all essentials Frenchmen, and had practically become merged with the Frankish or Gallic population among whom they live" (Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 5, Chapter XV) and maintaining a "tribal" distinction nearly 200 years after their first settlement would be grossly inaccurate. This is not to downplay their Scandinavian ancestry, of course, which was an undeniable component in their success.

Rollo, on the other hand, was certainly not irrelevant but rather central to the identity of Normandy that began to develop under Richard I. This is why I quoted from a text written by the sanctioned historian of the duchy who lived until 1043, as it reveals how its administration perceived its legacy well into the 11th century.

Finally, there were three popes at play in regards to the expeditions I mentioned (Nicholas II, Alexander II and Gregory VII), none of whom was anybody's marionette. If anything the Hautevilles provided French-born Nicholas the necessary counterweight to Byzantine influence; Alexander was the first to sanction what became a "proto-crusade" in Spain, and through William he was able to rectify the ineptitude of the archbishop of Canterbury (see Gregorian reforms in Favier "Les Plantagenets" for context), eventually replacing him by Lanfranc. All three provided their explicit support and battle standard to the aforementioned conquests, ultimately securing acknowledgment of papal sovereignty in all three kingdoms.

I hope these clarifications are helpful. It's important to remain close to the sources and their critical interpretation when discussing complex periods like these, otherwise your rendition of history will be no better than a Jack Ludlow novel. Great thread btw. Cheers.